Josh, Whitney, Bradley, Ellen, etc.

This is Sunday, and I am going to ramble a little bit.

The Post this week quoted the superintendent of schools in Montgomery County talking about why the schools hand out "reprehensible and deplorable" materials to students. He says they have to, they have no choice.

Is that right? Is that possible? The law requires schools to give students disgusting literature that directly contradicts the knowledge they acquire in health classes?

Superintendent Joshua Starr told a group of high school students Tuesday that he found the actions of a nonprofit group that sent fliers home describing how gay people can change their orientation to be “reprehensible and deplorable.”

The fliers from Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays went home with report cards at several county high schools last week.

...

“My job is to protect the safety and well being of our students,” Starr said, explaining that PFOX’s message could cause harm. “We are trying to figure out what we can do within a tight legal box,” he said.

Any non-profit organization is allowed to send fliers out to students four times a year, unless it’s considered hate speech, a right that was upheld in a court case several years ago. Starr could not ban the PFOX fliers unless he banned all fliers, something he said the school system is considering. Starr: PFOX fliers saying gays can change ‘reprehensible and deplorable’

PFOX is an organization that uses a cruel hoax -- the fiction that gay people can learn to be not-gay -- to propagate prejudice against LGBT people. By implying that gay people have chosen to be the way they are, and that they can choose not to be, PFOX opens the door to discrimination. And that is their whole reason for existing. There is no evidence that people can change their sexual orientation. The problem is that the president of PFOX has a gay son and wishes he was straight, it's as pathetically simple as that. Well, plus the fact that it is a pretty good fund-raising angle, or used to be.

There were other groups promoting the "ex-gay" idea, but almost all of them have given it up. You might find some bisexual people who bat from either side of the plate, otherwise the only people who say they have stopped being gay seem to be ones who are highly motivated by pay or publicity to say so.

And yet, our school district passes out flyers to students, telling them they can "leave the homosexual lifestyle" if they choose. And the Superintendent of schools shrugs and says they have to do it.

As this article notes, there is an exception for hate speech. Okay, you got it. Stand up and fight. There is a very good case that this is hate speech. It is cleverly veiled, but PFOX talking cheerfully about "ex-gays" is no less hateful than the Klan describing how great white people are -- a nice, positive message, nothing against anybody. You don't have to scowl and stomp your feet to propagate hate, the best propagandists know how to make their message palatable.

We would not expect our Superintendent of Schools to practice civil disobedience, to take a leadership position and make a correct moral decision when his lawyers tell him it might get expensive. His message is that he is forced to give reprehensible and deplorable material to children. What kind of lesson is that for them? Stand up for what you believe -- if the lawyers say it's okay.

The news today is all about Whitney Houston. Man, what a voice, what a beauty. Forty eight years old. It is heartbreaking to see such a soul snuffed out. She denied being an addict, said she was just playing around, and now she's dead. The music business, show business, is a dangerous and destructive monster, and sometimes we lose someone. This was one that hurt.

One story this week did not make the news at all. Bradley Manning has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

This is the moral complement to MCPS's Joshua Starr leading a school district to give reprehensible and deplorable literature to minors. Bradley Manning is (allegedly) a soldier who saw evidence of crimes committed by US personnel in wartime and arranged to let the world find out about it, by passing secret information to Wikileaks. Of course he was breaking the rules of his workplace, and of course he got in trouble, but his treatment has revealed a dark side to our country and our culture. He has been held in prison for over a year without a trial, much of it in solitary, often under "suicide watch," where guards come and wake you up every time you fall asleep. Manning saw reprehensible and deplorable conduct and did something about it, and we can expect him to be crucified for that.

Some members of the Parliament of Iceland nominated him for a Peace Prize, writing:

We have the great honor of nominating Private First Class Bradley Manning for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Manning is a soldier in the United States army who stands accused of releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The leaked documents pointed to a long history of corruption, war crimes, and imperialism by the United States government in international dealings. These revelations have fueled democratic uprising around the world, including a democratic revolution in Tunisia. According to journalists, his alleged actions helped motivate the democratic Arab Spring movements, shed light on secret corporate influence on our foreign policies, and most recently contributed to the Obama Administration agreeing to withdraw all U.S.troops from the occupation in Iraq.

Bradley Manning has been incarcerated for well over a year by the U.S. government without a trial. He spent over ten months of that time period in solitary confinement, conditions which experts worldwide have criticized as torturous. Juan Mendez, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, has repeatedly requested and been denied a private meeting with Manning to assess his conditions.

The documents made public by WikiLeaks should never have been kept from public scrutiny. The revelations - including video documentation of an incident in which American soldiers gunned down Reuters journalists in Iraq - have helped to fuel a worldwide discussion about America's overseas engagements, civilian casualties of war, imperialistic manipulations, and rules of engagement. Citizens worldwide owe a great debt to the WikiLeaks whistleblower for shedding light on these issues, and so I urge the Committee to award this prestigious prize to accused whistleblower Bradley Manning.

Sincerely,

Birgitta Jónsdóttir

Margrét Tryggvadóttir

Þór Saari

Members of the Icelandic Parliament for The Movement

There is some evidence that Manning is a transgender person who goes by a female name privately, but at this time, officially, the male gender is assigned, and we will refer to him in that way until a transition is announced.

Ah, yes, one other thing. I loved this. There are a few people that you just have to like, and Ellen Degeneres is one of them. She's smart, funny, likes to dance, likes people, what can you say, she is just somebody you'd like to be friends with. JC Penney uses Ellen Degeneres as a spokesperson in their advertising.

Some group called One Million Moms, which actually does not have one million members but that's another story, has put out press releases accusing JC Penney of "jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon."

You know I love this. I love it when The Nutty Ones attack the Girl Scouts, and now they are attacking JC Penney, of all the things. What retailer is more Norman-Rockwell-Americana that Penney's? Can you imagine a place less controversial? Their clothes are not fashionable, they are practical and affordable. Ordinary people shop there. And ordinary people love Ellen Degeneres. But Ellen is a lesbian, and to the One Million Moms that's all that matters.

The CEO of Penney's issued a statement:

One of the great things about America is people can speak their mind. And you know, the organization that believes one thing has spoken and it was great to see Ellen share her views yesterday. And we stand squarely behind Ellen as our spokesperson and that's a great thing. Because she shares the same values that we do in our company. Our company was founded 110 years ago on The Golden Rule, which is about treating people fair and square, just like you would like to be treated yourself. And we think Ellen represents the values of our company and the values that we share.

See, that's what it takes. There was a complaint, criticism, and I'll bet there was a meeting of guys in suits where some of them strongly advocated dumping Ellen and finding a spokesperson that no one would complain about. But the CEO showed leadership, he didn't just wait for the storm to blow over, he went out and faced the cameras and made a strong and clear statement: Ellen's values are his company's values.